[ale] Really cool new hardware
Jim Kinney
jim.kinney at gmail.com
Tue Jan 19 07:48:42 EST 2021
I think the "made for Linux" is a reference to the board and not the chip.
On January 18, 2021 11:34:12 PM EST, jonhall80 at comcast.net wrote:
>All,
>
>I have not really inspected the ISA for RISC-V to see if there were any
>instructions that were "designed for Linux" other than the normal
>instructions that would be there for almost any modern operating system
>for things like atomic operations, etc.
>
>Since RISC-V is a RISC computer, I would expect the instructions to be
>as simple as possible and allow the compilers to do optimization to
>make the chip run very fast.
>
>On the other hand, as you to up the stack of things necessary for
>speed, such as good design for cache, data transfer, etc. I would hope
>that the architects were able to jettison lots of legacy features that
>are not necessary in a completely new architecture that would not be
>needed for backward compatibility, and instead build in compatibility
>with 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit and 128-bit instructions.
>
>On the other hand, to talk about a BOARD that is "Linux compatible" I
>could see lots of things that would make it "Linux friendly", such as
>hardware interfaces for I/O that would be published and available to
>software developers, boot code that would have the sources published,
>having the ability for the kernel to interact with hardware interfaces
>built into the system, and the ability for hypervisors to work well
>with the board, again leaving behind some trade-offs done for previous
>operating systems.
>
>This is not to say that these other operating systems will not change
>over time to take advantage of this new hardware, it is just that some
>of the legacy stuff will be left behind.
>
>Just my thoughts on this.
>
>md
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 01/18/2021 10:05 PM Michael Potter via Ale <ale at ale.org>
>wrote:
>>
>>
>> I skimmed the article.
>>
>> I did not see anywhere where it said what made it made for Linux.
>>
>> Any clue?
>>
>> I would expect two things....
>>
>> Some kind of instructions specific for networking.
>>
>> Instructions specific for fork().
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:50 AM Jim Kinney via Ale < ale at ale.org
>mailto:ale at ale.org > wrote:
>>
>> > > All true. Spark and Power are (mostly,?)dead and
>no longer produced outside of industrial gear.
>> >
>> > I guess my real enthusiasm is for the "designed for Linux"
>aspect.
>> >
>> > I don't play games so I'm not sure what runs all the
>consoles now. I also don't have any beagle toys yet. My electronic
>skills are really rusty and never were design oriented. I designed and
>built only one power supply and it was strange, variable current 0-5A
>at one pin pair, variable voltage 0-1000V on another pin pair, one pin
>common between the two. Basically a variac driven tube. The 0.5 F
>capacitor was fun.
>> >
>> > On January 17, 2021 11:12:55 AM EST, Solomon Peachy <
>pizza at shaftnet.org mailto:pizza at shaftnet.org > wrote:
>> >
>> > > > >
>> > > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 08:26:18AM -0500, Jim Kinney
>via Ale wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > > > > A fully open source cpu design is a game
>changer.
>> > > >
>> > > > > > >
>> > >
>> > > Is it really? SPARC, and POWER have all had fully
>open ISAs and core
>> > > designs since 2005 and 2013, respectively.
>> > >
>> > > As someone who has done low-level hacking on various
>architectures over
>> > > the years, the actual CPU core/ISA makes very little
>difference; most of
>> > > the headaches are in the rest of the
>system[-on-chip].
>> > >
>> > > RISC-V might be fully open from an ISA perspective,
>but that doesn't
>> > > mean that any given SoC built on it has an open
>source CPU core, or that
>> > > any of the various controllers (DMA, display, audio,
>I2S/I2C/SPI, etc)
>> > > or accelerators (video codecs, crypto engines) are
>open source or even
>> > > have documentation available without three-deep NDAs.
>> > >
>> > > Meanwhile, from the perspective of someone writing
>software, the
>> > > underlying CPU architecture rarely matters if you're
>not doing low-level
>> > > OS/compiler hackery or trying to hand-optimize
>performance-critical code
>> > > that can't be run on a GPU or more specialized
>accelerator.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > > > > > I was quite surprised to see fedora is
>ready to go on riscV. It's
>> > > > usually Debian or Ubuntu that's first on the
>ground for new gear.
>> > > >
>> > > > > > >
>> > >
>> > >
>https://sifivetechsymposium.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Fedora_on_RISC-V_SiFive_BJ_2019.pdf
>> > >
>> > > TL;DR: Fedora has a very strong "upstream first"
>mentality, and Red
>> > > Hatters contribute heavily to all of the upstream
>projects that needed
>> > > work to enable RISC-V and used Fedora's tooling to
>work out the kinks.
>> > >
>> > > ...meanwhile, has Ubuntu _ever_ preceeded Debian when
>it comes to
>> > > architecture/platform support?
>> > >
>> > > (I don't mean "here's a pre-built image you can put
>on an SD card to
>> > > boot board X and you have to use our special
>snowflake kernel and
>> > > bootloader with binary blobs which preclude getting
>security updates
>> > > from the distribution")
>> > >
>> > > - Solomon
>> > >
>> > > > >
>> > --
>> > Computers amplify human error
>> > Super computers are really cool
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>> > >
>>
>> --
>> Michael Potter
>> Tapp Solutions, LLC
>> http://www.tappsolutions.com
>> +1 770 815 6142 ** Atlanta ** michael at potter.name
>mailto:michael at potter.name **
>http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpotter
>> Schedule a meeting with me: https://calendly.com/michael-potter
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--
Computers amplify human error
Super computers are really cool
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